“A man cannot change his feelings again during the last rush with a veil of blood before his eyes. He does not want to take prisoners but to kill. He has no scruples left; only the spell of primeval instinct remains. It is not till the blood has flowed that the mist gives way in his soul. He looks around him as if waking from the bondage of a dream. It is only then that he becomes once more a soldier of to-day and capable of addressing himself to the next problem of tactics.”
From volume VIII of the file · Book · 20th century
Themes: war
More from Ernst Jünger
“And, so strange as it may sound, I learned from this very four year’s schooling in force and in all the fantastic extravagance of material warfare, that life has no depth of meaning except when it is pledged for an ideal, and that there are ideals in comparison with which the life of an individual and even of a people has no weight. And though the aim for which I fought as an individual, as an atom in the whole body of the army, was not to be achieved, though material force cast us, apparently, to the Earth, yet we learned once and for all to stand for a cause and if necessary to fall as befitted men.”
“However cleverly people may talk and write, there is nothing to set against self-sacrifice that is not pale, insipid, and miserable.”
“The great moment had come. The fire lifted over the first trenches. We advanced…
The turmoil of our feelings was called forth by rage, alcohol, and the thirst for blood as we stepped out, heavily yet irresistibly, for the enemy’s lines. And therewith beat the pulse of heroism—the godlike and the bestial inextricably mingled. I was far in front of the company, followed by my batman, and a man of one year’s service called Haake. In my right hand I gripped my revolver, in my left a bamboo riding-cane. I was boiling with a fury now utterly inconceivable to me. The overpowering desire to kill winged my feet. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes.”